


Four Days

by sheafrotherdon



Series: sciencebros [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012), The Consultant (Marvel One-Shot)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-01
Updated: 2012-10-01
Packaged: 2017-11-15 09:40:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/525888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four days after the battle of Manhattan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [esteefee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/esteefee/gifts).



> With grateful thanks to dogeared for beta.

It's four days and the witnessing of tesseract travel before Bruce washes up on the sidewalk in front of Stark Tower. The city's still bloodied, her fine bones broken, but there are people walking unafraid, and Bruce wears his share of triumph as relief. Vendors hawk shirts and ball caps and souvenir newsprint – a blur that might be Iron Man; the underside of a Chitauri craft; Cap and Thor side by side, viewed at an angle, almost upside down. Fitting, he thinks – the world off-kilter, pedaled for ten dollars, a handful of change.

The lobby of Stark Tower is hushed as a cathedral. Bruce didn't expect that – figured that Tony's swagger in concrete form would survive the war undimmed. But war transforms, he supposes ruefully – feels the truth of that in his still-sore bones, in the echo of a larger roar now dulled to the throb of blood inside his ear. He's at ease and he's nervous in equal measure, and he tells the receptionist why he's there, and his hands are restless. He should've bought coffee. The air smells of smoke.

He's given credentials, ushered into an elevator he rides alone, his security clearance higher than that of the staff who made him welcome. There's no music to listen to as he rises save the whir of steel cables and the ping of each floor. Bruce imagines he can hear the shift of the flyweights, the faint clank of gears, percussion to the slide of his body upward through ticking seconds and into new time.

_____

"There you are," says Tony as Bruce steps into R&D1. He has a wrench in his hand, a loop of wire around his wrist. "Hold just a second, got a thing in 4.9 that needs. . . " He smacks a three-armed robot in the gearbox, and something chirps back at him happily. "Fixed. How are you? You brought a bag, right?"

Bruce holds up a hand. "Enough for one night, I'm not –"

"Oh, c'mon," Tony whines. "I fixed it up extra, paid the clean-up team twice what they're worth. A whole floor, super-duper special, all the tricks and whistles and that's all beside the point because where are you living now, exactly? A box on some sidewalk in Queens?"

Bruce holds Tony's gaze, unruffled. "Couch," he offers. "In the Bronx."

Tony narrows his eyes, offers a twitch of a smile. "You can play coy, but if you think – "

"Tony. I don't need a handout. I don't need," Bruce waves his hand, "this kind of view."

"You," Tony says, waving his wrench in Bruce's direction, "are still living small."

"And you're still used to buying attention," Bruce says back.

"Touché." Tony twists the wrench in his hands, sets it down on a workstation. "But seriously, you gotta see your bedroom."

Bruce laughs softly, rubs his eyes with one hand, imagines how long this campaign of relocation will be waged. "Candyland first? Candyland survived, right?"

Tony purses his lips. "Hmmm. Seems aliens from another dimension target penthouse suites before research units. Rude."

_____

Despite the smell of fresh paint and the low hum of the workmen's radio, Candyland is everything Tony had promised. The basic tour takes them almost five hours, with a break for lunch on R&D6. Bruce feels curiosity burn at the tips of his fingers, longs to press his eye to the nanoscope, run a hand over every interface, bend close over wire and circuit boards. He wants the intimacy of ones and zeros, to lose time in the flare of solder and flame, to consider the surface of a dozen atoms. 

"You see anything you want to work on?" Tony asks, and Bruce is so dazed with possibilities he can only blink like he's stepped into sunlight after hours in the dark.

_____

By dinnertime they're arguing, and it's pleasant somehow, the force of Tony's arrogance, the fun of being cautiously riled. "It won't work," Bruce says, following Tony past ladders and industrial-sized epoxy cans and plastic that's draped from ceiling to floor. "You can't just – "

Tony shrugs blithely. "It's no big deal, I'll code around the –"

Bruce huffs. "You can't. You understand what I’m saying? It isn't possible to – "

" – and Jarvis can handle the trickier bits while we eat, to be honest – "

"But the trajectory of what you're proposing –"

"It's entirely doable!" Tony says, turning around to walk backwards, spreading his arms wide.

"You can't just make this shit up!" Bruce says, exasperated.

Tony raises an eyebrow. "Um. Made a new element?" he says and taps his chest. "Now, who wants a beer?"

Bruce flops down on the once-black couch and clouds of dust rise up. "Scotch," he says, rubbing the back of his neck where it's stiff. "Straight up." His joints ache dully. He listens to the clink of the decanter, the sound of liquor being poured, then there's silence until Tony rounds the couch and hands him a glass.

"Best you've tasted," Tony says.

Bruce angles the glass in a salute. "I bet it is."

Tony sits on the floor, folds his legs up under him before he drinks. "A nerve, you said."

Bruce lets the scotch wash clean across his tongue. "A what?"

"On the helicarrier you said you don't get a suit of armor. You said you were exposed when you – " Tony twirls a finger to sum up the experience of being the Other Guy. "Like a nerve. So I was thinking – you change back and that's gone?"

Bruce sets down his glass, scratches at a bruise by the base of his thumb. "Not gone, no."

"You need an aspirin, I can – "

"I can feel where he was larger," Bruce says. "Where . . . . " He swallows before he claims this part of himself. ". . . I was larger." He blows out a breath, feels the words rising quick, now, from the places he's hidden them away for so long. "My bones feel wrong. My skin is too tight. My muscles freeze up and I remember the bullets, the sting of them, the pain when they hit as a shower. And the anger . . . " He offers what he knows is a lopsided smile. "I remember the burn of it."

Tony's face is wide open – no bravado, no ironic mask to keep the world at bay. "But this last time, you chose it."

Bruce ducks his head. "Ends up that doesn't change what it's like after."

Tony nods, the barest movement. "I'm sorry."

Bruce laughs. "You know how long since anyone said they were sorry for all this?"

"No."

"It's . . . been a while." Bruce glances at the hole in the floor that Loki left behind. "You know, I worried about Steve the most. 

"Steve?"

"That he'd be horrified by what I did. Trying to be like him."

"Cap's not that guy," Tony offers.

"No. But he's army," Bruce says, pushing up off the couch to walk off his agitation. "Same stock as Ross."

"One," said Tony, "Ross is a singular asshole. I mean right out of the gate, a crud-sucking, dumbfuck asshole the likes of which few people have seen in this galaxy or the next. Second." He grins. "You hear about his favorite bar?" 

Bruce eyes him carefully. "His bar?"

Tony nods, looking limitlessly smug. "You have no idea how much you want to hear this story."

_____

His bedroom turns out to be a suite – a whole floor of Stark Tower just for him, and four others set aside; Clint, Natasha, Steve, and Thor. He'd be staggered by Tony's largesse except for the fact Tony speaks of it as logic, someplace central, someplace safe. Bruce can't remember anyone speaking of safety in a way that encompassed him before, in a way that suggested respite and a home rather than a cage. He finds it hard to say more than thank you despite the plain inadequacy of those two solid words.

"You have a workroom," Tony says, gesturing to his left as they walk through the suite. "Living space, bedroom, guest room, bathrooms, kitchen, JARVIS interface for conferencing, wake-up calls, 2am algorithms, you name it. Elevator that requires SHIELD level seven clearance to access – JARVIS will work with your biorhythms, don't worry. Hall passes are so 1975."

Bruce drops his bag by the couch, shoves his hands in his pockets. He can feel where his jacket's threadbare enough to tear at the collar, knows that beneath the dust of construction there's the dust of evasion ground into the tread of his shoes. He feels conspicuous, a bad fit for luxury, and he wanders over to the window, glances out at a city littered with cranes and floodlights as crews work through the night. "You sure about this?" he asks.

"The glass you can break," Tony says, coming up beside him. "But the structure's sound – vibranium alloy, don't tell." He smiles briefly. "I planned ahead, not for you especially, but for – " He gestures flippantly. "Stuff."

Bruce nods. "Stuff." Like alien soldiers and giant roaches from a galaxy whose location they don't know. "Smart."

Tony claps his hands and turns abruptly on his heel. "So, you're set, then? And I'll see you in R&D tomorrow – 8.30 too early? You a night owl or . . . "

"Tony."

"If you say thank you one more time – "

"If you're going to work, I could work, too."

Tony presses his lips together as if he hears what Bruce isn't saying about the crash after a high. "I'm fine, you know," he says at last. "Really."

"I know," Bruce offers, and doesn't remind Tony that he fell to earth and came close to dying; doesn't tell him how Cap laid a hand on the arc reactor, how Thor stared at the ground, how Bruce's anguish felt hot and live inside his chest and he roared out of fear and grief. "I just like working."

Tony's face is open again, stripped of its usual watchful defense. "I'd say I'd like the company but I've never had a peer before," he murmurs. "I might be terrible at working in a team."

And there it is, a glimmer of everything Tony's held close against his chest for four long days, for the hundred before. "You lay on the wire," Bruce says, because that answers everything. "And now you're holding out on me. Where's your favorite piece of tech?"

Tony watches him for a moment that drags out beyond what's comfortable. "R&D5," he says and his voice is rough. "Nano-technology for the next suit. Or the one after that."

"All right." Bruce takes off his jacket, tosses it on a chair. "Let's see how annoying you get when someone else is in your space."

"You're in my space now," Tony counters.

"And I'm staying," Bruce says.


End file.
